PATSY R. BRUMFIELD: Wintry trash makes messy neighborhoods

Surely, Mother Nature is just teasing us here in the chronological dead of winter. Surely, the groundhog will see his shadow today, as he does most of those Feb. 2nds.
But as the Grandpup and I roam the neighborhood on our multiple walks, I can’t help but notice that those early daffodils are popping up all over the place.
I’m also seeing daylily greens on the rise, and even a few of those most-early forsythias.
Of course, I welcome spring. It’s a favorite season, along with fall, when it starts to cool off. I love turning off the heat/air to enjoy those temperate breezes.
But newborn February isn’t spring yet, is it? Perhaps Mother Nature’s new global-warming calendar has shifted the seasonal axis, kind of like what that Pacific tsunami did for the Mother Ship itself.
Even if it were early spring, the ground’s too wet to do anything but dig a nasty hole.
I’m just going to go back inside and think about the Super Bowl, which tells me it’s still winter.
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Does anyone else think Tupelo has become a litter bin?
As I walk the neighborhood, I usually take along a plastic grocery bag to pick up bottles, fast-food wrappers, beer cans and various other unsightly items people apparently just feel no guilt about tossing from their vehicles.
That started me to take closer looks at our near-street landscapes wherever I drive.
People, it’s a mess!
Gutters, ditches and scads of driveway entrances appear to be growing their own piles of trash.
More beer bottles, wrappers, garbage remnants. It looks terrible.
As someone who cares about what our town looks like, I find it hard to grasp that someone would ride down the street and just throw stuff out the window.
I wish that if they’re going to be pigs, they just keep their mess in their own vehicles.
Apparently that isn’t how it works.
What are we to do?
The easiest solution is for each one of us to walk out to the street and take a look. Every day or every day or two.
If you see foreign junk in the yard, pick it up.
If you see the remnants of your own junk, pick it up.
If you’re walking around like I do, pick up a little extra. It’s unpardonable to walk by a tossed soft-drink can and not bend over and pick it up.
What better way to use up those plastic grocery bags?
• • •
It’s not fair to put all this beautification responsibility on city workers.
Likely, there aren’t enough of them to go around anyway.
It’s also not realistic to tell ourselves we’ll just wait until the weather warms up before we organize some cleanup efforts.
I feel like a Tea Partier here with all this “personal responsibility” talk.
The answer to our litter problem is the proverbial look in the mirror.
Patsy R. Brumfield writes a Thursday column. Contact her at patsy.brumfield@journalinc.com.